The Twa Miss Dawsons Part 44

"And besides you were an independent woman, with a life and work of your own, and content."

"Jean, my dear," said her aunt, laying down her work and folding her hands on her lap, as was her way when she had something serious to say, "unless ye are keeping something in your heart that ye have never told to me, and there be a reason for it, I would hardly say that you are looking at things with your usual sense and cheerfulness. Do you think that your father has less need o' you now than he has ay had? And do you think it is because o' you that George is so set on taking his wife to the High-street? I see no great change that has come to you or your work, and though it is like giving up your brother in a sense, yet you are glad to do it. What has happened to you, my dear? Would it ease your heart to tell it to me?"

Jean had changed colour many times while her aunt was speaking, and now she sat with her eyes turned away to the sea, as if she were considering whether it would be well to speak. Miss Jean kept silence. She needed no words to tell her the girl's trouble. She had guessed the cause of the weariness and restlessness that Jean could not hide from her, though she could keep a cheerful face before the rest of her world. But she thought it possible that after so long a silence it might do her heart good to speak, if it were only a word, and so she waited silently. But on the whole she was not sorry when Jean rose and took her hat in her hand to go.

"No, Auntie Jean, I have nothing to tell you, positively nothing. I am 'ower weel off,' as Tibbie Cairnie says. That is what ails me, I dare say."

"You'll ha'e May and her bairns through the summer, and plenty to do, and there is nothing better than that to put away--"

"Discontent," said Jean, as her aunt hesitated for a word. "My dear, ye should ha'e gone with your father and George. It would ha'e done you good."

"Well, perhaps it might. But it is too late now. Did I tell you that May wrote that Sir Percy Harefield was at the wedding?"

"No, ye didna tell me."

"May thinks he asked my father to invite him, and my father seems to be as much taken up with him as ever. He is coming north again, she says."

"And has his new tide changed him any, and his new possessions, does your sister say?"

"He has grown fat--more portly, May calls it," said Jean laughing. "She says he is going to Parliament."

"He'll do little ill there, it's likely."

"And as little good, ye think, auntie. It will keep him out of mischief, as he used to say. And after all, I dare say he will do as well as most of them. He is a gentleman anyway, and that is ay something."

And then she went away, and while Miss Jean mused on the cause of Jean's discontent, she could not forget what she called the Englishman's constancy, and she heartily wished that something might happen to keep him from coming north for a while.

"And I canna help thinking that if Jean had gone to her brother's marriage, something might have happened to set her heart at rest."

But that was not Jean's thought. She had not said until the last moment that she was not going, partly because she wished to avoid discussion, and partly because of something else. The many good reasons by which she had succeeded in convincing her father that it was best for her to stay at home, were none of them the reason why she did not go. That could be told to no one. It was only with pain and something like a sense of shame--though she told herself angrily that there was no cause for shame--that she acknowledged to herself the reason.

"I care for him still, though he has forgotten me. I ay cared for him.

And he loved me once, I know well. But if he loved me still, he would come and tell me. I could not go and meet him now--and his mother's eyes would be on me--and yet, oh! how I long to see his face after all these years!"

After all these years she might well say. For since May's marriage day, when her heart fell low as Marion told her that her brother had gone away, she had never seen him. He had come north once with George when she was away from home, and he had been in England more than once while she was visiting his sister, but he had never come to see her.

It had hurt her, but she had comforted herself, saying it was because of her father or perhaps also because of his own mother that he did not come. But since Marion was coming home to them, that could be no reason now if he cared, and almost up to the last moment she had waited, hoping that he might come. And then she told herself it was impossible that she should go to meet him, caring for him still.

"And the best thing I can do now is to put it all out of my mind forever."

If she only could have done so, and she did her best to try. May came home with her father; and she and her pretty boys and her baby daughter were with them all the summer. And by and by George brought home his wife, and it was a gay and busy time with them all.

May, who saw most things that were pa.s.sing, noticed that in some ways her sister was different from what she used to be. She was not the leader in all the gay doings, but left the young visitors at the house to amuse themselves in their own way. She was intent on household matters, as was right, and she took more time to herself in the quiet of her own room than she used to do. But she was merry enough with the children, and indeed gave much of her leisure to them, going about in the house and the garden with baby Mary in her arms, and the little brothers following in their train for many a pleasant hour.

George brought his wife home to the High-street. Even Mr Dawson after a while acknowledged that they had been wise to secure for themselves the quiet of a house of their own. Not that they began in these first days by living to themselves. There was enough to do. There were gay doings in many homes in honour of the bride, and the honour intended was generally accepted none the less gratefully or gracefully, that the gay doings could have been happily dispensed with by them both.

They had pleasures and occupations of another kind also, for Marion was too well-known to the poor folk of Portie to make her coming among them as young Mrs Dawson an intrusion or a trouble. So the young husband and wife went in and out together, "the very sicht o' them," as even Mrs Cairnie owned, "doing a body gude as they pa.s.sed."

And on the comings and goings of these happy young people, on the honour paid them, on their kindly words and deeds, and heartsome ways with rich and poor, with old friends and new, Mr Dawson looked and pondered with a constant, silent delight which few besides the two Jeans saw or suspected. Even they could not but wonder sometimes at the unceasing interest he found in them and their doings at home and abroad.

He wondered at it himself sometimes. It was like a new sweet spring of life to him to see them, and to hear about them, and to know that all things went well with them; and though few out of his own household could have seen any change in him, it was clear in many ways to those who saw him in his own house day by day.

"G.o.d leads His ain by many ways to Himself," thought Miss Jean in her solitary musings over it all. "They that think they ken a' the secrets o' nature tell us that the flowing waters and the changing seasons, bringing whiles the frost and whiles the suns.h.i.+ne, have made from the rocks that look so unchangeable, much o' the soil out of which comes bread to us all. And who kens but G.o.d's gender dealings, coming after sore trouble, may prepare his heart for the richer springing o' the good seed, till it bring forth a hundred-fold to His honour and glory. I ay kenned that the Lord had a richt hold o' him through all, and that He would show him His face at last. Blessed be His name?"

"It whiles does folk gude to get their ain way about things, though that's no' the belief o' gude folk generally, and nae in the Bible, as they would gar us believe," said Mrs Cairnie, who never kept her opinions to herself if she could get any one to listen to them. "George Dawson is growing an auld failed man--and nae won'er considerin' how lang he has been toilin' and moilin', gi'ein' himsel' neither nicht's rest nor day's ease. But auld and failed though he be, there's a satisfied look on his face that naebody has seen there since the days he used to come in to the kirk wi' his wife and a' his bairns followin'

after him,--langer ago than ye'll mind, Maggie, my woman. And for that matter naebody saw it then. It was satisfaction o' anither kind that he had in those days, I'm thinkin'."

"But, grannie," said Maggie Saugster, giving her the name that the old woman liked best, though she would not acknowledge it, "is it about young Mr and Mrs Dawson you are thinkin', or is it about May and her bairns? Because I mind ye once said to my mother and me that you doubted the old man wasna weel pleased when Mr George brought Marion Calderwood home."

"Oh! ay. Ye're gude at mindin' things that's nae speired at you whiles.

He's gotten his will about mair things than that of late, and what I say is, that it has done him gude, as trouble never did."

"Maybe his satisfaction comes from giving up his ain will, rather than from getting it. I ken the look ye mean, mother," said her daughter gently.

"Weel, it may be. A thing seems to ha'e taken a turn sin' I was young.

But it's nae the look his face used to wear when man or woman countered him in the old days."

"Ay. But it would be different when the Lord took him in hand."

"The Lord has been lang about it, if it's only the day that He's takin'

him in hand. But what I'm sayin' is this, that it does folk gude to get their ain will about things whiles, and I only wish that the Lord would try it on me, and set me strong on my ain twa feet again," said Mrs Cairnie, taking up her crutch with a sigh.

"Or satisfy you with His will instead. That would do as well, mother."

"Weel, weel! That's your way o' it, and if I'm allowed to tak' the wrang gait, it winna be for want o' tellin'," said the old woman, moving slowly down to the corner of the street which was almost the length of her tether now. The eyes of the others followed her pitifully.

"She's nae that sharp now--nae that soon angered, I mean," said Maggie, with some hesitation, meaning to say something kind, but not quite sure how far her sister-in-law might accept her sympathy.

"No," said the other after a pause. "And I whiles think that the Lord is getting His will o' her too, though she hardly kens it hersel' yet."

"Ay. As Miss Jean says, the Lord has many ways," said Maggie reverently.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

SUSPENSE.

And so the summer wore over, and May went home with all her children, though Jean would fain have kept one boy with her. But her mother feared the bleak east winds for the rather delicate Georgie who was the favourite at Saughleas, and she had reasons that satisfied herself for taking little Keith home also, but she promised to send them both back again as soon as the winter was over.

The summer ended, and autumn days grew short, and a quiet time came that reminded Jean of the days when May had gone to London "to meet her fate," and she was waiting for the coming home of the "John Seaton."

There was the same long dreaming in the gloaming, before her father came in, the same listening to the woeful voices of the winds and the sea, and the same shadow on Jean's face and in her wistful eyes that her father had seen in those days--now so long ago. He sometimes surprised it now, but, if this happened, it went hard with Jean if she did not make him forget it before he slept.

About the new year Mrs Calderwood's old friend died, and when her will was read, to her surprise Mrs Calderwood found that she had left her money enough to enable her to live henceforth free from the cares which accompany the task of making too little do the work of enough, as had been her lot during the greater part of her life of widowhood.

George, who had gone to London to be with her at that time, insisted on bringing her back to Scotland with him. She had exhausted herself in attendance on her old friend, and she needed a change. Later she was to return and make all necessary arrangements, but in the mean time it would have been neither wise nor kind he thought to leave her there alone.

For this George had a better reason than he gave to her. News had come of terrible storms that had pa.s.sed over Southern seas. Already rumours of disaster and loss had reached England, and the owners of Captain Calderwood's s.h.i.+p, the "Ben Nevis," were beginning to feel some anxiety with regard to her.

Another s.h.i.+p, the "Swallow," had arrived from Melbourne, bringing word that the "Ben Nevis" was to have sailed three days after the time she had put to sea. The voyage had been a long one, though happily the "Swallow" had pa.s.sed beyond the lat.i.tudes where the storms had raged most fiercely before the danger had arisen. The "Ben Nevis" was the swifter vessel of the two, and by rights, she ought to have reached England before her. And when ten days pa.s.sed, and then ten more, there was good reason for fear for her safety.